Scott and Jean Versus the Killer Quesadilla
by Quillon42
Summary: Just a wistful celebration for what might have been between Scott and Jean around the millennium if their love had gone on and Marvel had not, instead of vice versa. Also a bit of pining for the days before the X-Men hit the mainstream (honestly no offense to any post-1992 fans out there—I'm aiming at Marvel itself here as my bullseye).


PREFACE

This is my first comic book fan fiction—at least the first one that I'm posting out to the world. I have followed X-stuff off and on since about 1989/1990 or so. I always figured that the X-Men have had three phases of exposure: the "General Cult" phase, from 1963 to 1992, when the TAS cartoon came out; the "Teen Mainstream" phase, from 1992 to 2000, with the TAS cartoon, many many video games, and other multimedia mainly for teens; and the "Adult Mainstream" phase, which was 2000 on, with the live action films. I consider myself officially from the Cult time, albeit at the very tail end of it; I started with the comics themselves and such and went from there. I confess that if there's anything that part of me is a tiny bit of a "cult snob" about, it's X-Men—although I'm totally cool with later fans and stuff. (There have been, like, one or two TAS-originated fans I've met, out of hundreds whom I have found (the one or two, that is) to be a bit d-baggy, but mostly, they're cool—witness in my case my admission of my "Quiddle" character in this story as being somewhat douchy, also…see below).

One of the main points of this story is a bit of a lament, though, at what I perceive to be Marvel's transformation into something a bit more…boorish, and overbearing, in the 1990s and onward in reaching the mainstream. And my target here, definitively, is Marvel itself. It's kind of like what some people feel about, say, AVGN (the Youtube/other sites game reviewer known as the Angry Video Game Nerd, for those who might not be familiar) after his first season, and how he lost a lot of his initial charm once he started with ScrewAttack; alternatively, it's like that band that you liked in high school when they were "underground," but then they "sold out" once they hit the mainstream. IMO, the company, i.e. Marvel—and really, to be fair, the entire industry, lost a good part of itself in the 1990s and on, right around the time when the TAS cartoon came out, and the medium switched around then from newsprint to glossy incidentally. Of course, whether it's comic books, internet shows, or rock bands, everything is always more charming and more precocious when it's fledgling, or at least "underground"—then it loses that charm when it hits the world stage (or in Marvel's case, as it already was at a world stage somewhat before the 1990s, just moreso a world stage). I guess I'm just lamenting this in the comic book medium with this story.

Granted, again, Marvel was a Machine even back in the 1980s and before (a pretty good seventies/eighties series called _E-Man_, from First Comics, parodies Stan Lee and his viciousness quite well in a story arc called The Dark Albatross Saga, which takes digs at the X-Men themselves as well), but Marvel just…it just became irretrievably worse into the nineties IMO. Anyway, I admit that the Quiddle character is, of course, a projection of myself into the story, which I've never really done before—he's over the top and extreme just to be an argumentative counterpoint to the Marvel Machine itself. I apologize in advance if he/I come(s) off as obnoxious and/or douchy. He's not necessarily consistent with the narrator, either, as the latter is cool with Lobdell whereas the former might not be (he may or may not be, I haven't decided). Anyway, I hope that at least some people feel a bit like the way I feel, about the older Marvel and stuff, and I hope you enjoy this; not to be overly verbose, but I will have more comments after the end of the story.

(NB1: I play with time here a bit; this story officially takes place around 2001 or so, when Scott becomes corrupted/"badass" (I hate that term…it's so corny) somewhat, but he still has the home in Alaska with Jean; also, some like Emma and Hope are shunted from the future here—not from any time travel device, but just from narrative license. This story is all a low-rent allegory, so I had to be able to play around a bit.)

(NB2: I know that Scott lived with Madelyne, and then Jean, in Anchorage, but I needed the right names for the oh-so-wrong puns, such as the one on Juneau.)

(NB3: I call Wolverine "James Logan Howlett" here…I don't know anymore what the order is/proper calling of his "real name" or whatever, so I went with that).

JUST THE FREAKING STORY ALREADY: SCOTT AND JEAN VERSUS THE KILLER QUESADILLA; OR, THROW

SCOTT UNDER THE BUS

By Quillon42

(SOMETIME AROUND THE TURN OF THE MILLENNIUM)

It had been hundreds of missions in for the both of them by the birth of the new millennium, but Jean Grey and Scott Summers were going as strongly as ever. Like a law firm or business partnership that had endured for decades, or an early sixties rock band that still persisted and toured even to this day, Scott and Jean had been battling side by side for a sizeable chunk of a century—with Jean of course missing some of the action due to the superheroing side effect of death every now and then—but they kept on throughout all this and maintained their undeniable infinite affection for one another as well.

Jean was ushering her spouse along telekinetically, they soaring several meters above the surface of the state sovereign in this reality known as Lobdellaware—a quaint place which fostered loving bonds and strong family dynamics. But soon they would cross the state line into a meaner, much more forbidding territory called Morrisota—and it was ever so frigid there. It was so, so cold in that state. And the people who lived there were completely off their heads.

Scott thought wistfully of the wondrous house, the home that he in this reality still cherished with his maroon-maned love in ALeeska. At times he would look at the house that they had, and it would bring a tear to his eye to think that something like this was finally his. Again.

Yes, he knew he was a jerk, an insufferable ass, to hurt his first spouse so. Nary a day went by, especially now with his permanent address in Jeanau, ALeeska, that he didn't think about Madelyne. And he would serve several sentences before Mephisto for her sake, he would, when he would pass from this planet. But now he had a new love to live for, another woman for whom he had to give his all.

Theirs was a magnificent love, that of Scott and Jean, one which was inimitable and indestructible. No magnetic moguls, no vicious pseudo-Victorian geneticists could sever their bonds.

But then, they never before encountered the portly pox that was to confront them soon—nor the cruel steel steed on which he rode, one far more horrific and devastating even than any mechanical equus of Apocalypse himself.

It was just as mutantdom's first couple was crossing the border into gloomy Grant County, where was situated the capital of Morrisota, when the monstrous mechanism erupted from the earth. The vituperative vehicle exploded from the ground like a synthetic Krakoa on crack, and it boasted about three dozen wheels of happiness-shattering and would-be-homewrecking justice.

Sitting atop the machine—which appeared to be an enormous bus—were the three mutants James Logan Howlett, Emma Frost, and Hope Summers—the three whom Jean and Scott were seeking on their scout-out here—the trio strapped into the most whimsical of seating apparatuses. It looked as if there were some kind of…rocket boosters situated underneath each of the metal chairs.

Most noticeable, though, was the obnoxiously obese overlord who wished the worst of harm upon his captives' would-be rescuers. "Well, well," said the pudgy panderer, as he confronted the two interloping lovers while the latter touched down atop the beast of a bus. "Just the couple I want to confront."

"You're going to let our friends go, right now," gritted Jean as he waved a hand in the enemy's direction. Then, under her breath: "Well, a couple of our friends, and Emma, anyway."

But as the once Marvel-ous, and now over the past few years more maternal mind mistress made to move the man monster with her mental maneuvers, the object of her assault simply stood there and crossed his blustery arms over his barreled chest.

"Sorry, honey," said the corpulent cad, as he continued to stand there unmoved. "Your telekineschtick doesn't work on me. I built up a resistance to redhead influences since the…trauma I suffered, from another of your kind, in the midst of my teenage years."

"Well, let's find out if you can see eye to eye with me!" cried Cyke as he bust out with a blast from his visor, full force against the brash boor…but then the fearless leader wished to crumple where he stood as the beryl laser bounced right off the hateful, homely enemy and shot off aimlessly into Morrisotan airspace.

The enormous enemy then wobbled as the impressive dual contents of his chest quivered querulously. It turned out that the "man" had yet another idiotic advantage against the heroes.

"Booby Quarts," he blathered, indicating the massive male mammaries, saturated with quarts of man milk (yes…ew), that his oversized self was sporting. "Completely impervious to any optic assault."

The insufferable adversary still just continued to stand against the duo so devoted to one another, as well as those captured before them whom they considered family, for being fellow X-ers. (Well, two out of three of them, anyway, considering the finicky Frost).

"You just don't get it, do you?" screamed the ferociously flabby fool who opposed Scott and Jean, he waving his arms manically as the bus they were on passed a stone monument with an all-essential engraving brought to Grant County by the magic of retroactive continuity: THIS MEMORIAL DEDICATED TO JAMES LOGAN HOWLETT, THE INVENTOR OF THE AEROPLANE, THE AUTOMOBILE, AND THE AIR CONDITIONER—WE OWE ALL OF OUR SOCIETY'S CONVENIENCE AND COMFORT TO HIM. Sure enough, of course, a life-size carved figure of The Wolverine hauling an AC unit accompanied the monument, complete with accompanying car and plane on either side of him. "The whole purpose of my capturing these three and bringing them to the forefront—the whole reason why the two of you are yourselves front and center in this story."

"What are you talking about?!" shouted Cyclops in return, tensing himself for another shot even though it apparently would not do any good against this sickening sleaze. "Can the snappy patter! What is your game?!"

Hurling his horrid head back, the Summers' foe foisted the haughtiest of hyenaic laughter their way. "It is time for you, Scott Summers, to take a most drastic trip—or turn, rather—really a downward spiral, even, to depths that your life, and especially your character, have never known. And it will be no one less than I…the Killer Quesadilla…who will engineer your total destruction."

At this Cyclops could muster nothing more and nothing other than his patented terminal grit of constipated angst—one usually attended to by an all-caps scream of his soulmate's given name…but thankfully all were spared this perennial paroxysm at the moment.

But, a second later, one would find that he or she could fuel an entire space shuttle booster with Scott's scat, which virtually shot out from the superhuman (at least figuratively) upon his seeing Jean, his very own Jean—just as he was her very own Scott—staring glassily and blankly out into the ether now, a vacant look that he recalled witnessing last while she (or at least an alien "she") initially wore the obsidian cape and corset most fanservaceously during the Hellfire segment of the Dark Phoenix Saga.

"Jean…?" was all he could softly, puppydoggily manage at the moment.

"She can't hear you now, of course, my little midget of manliness," chided the Quesa, the enemy snorting arrogantly from where he stood near the mutant captives. "I don't even need to be telepathic myself to know that you just flipped your brain back to about 1980, thinking hard and woefully about the time that you and the cosmic clone of your lifemate took on those stuffy pseudo-aristocrats in the lair of Hellfire! Well…

"Let me help you a bit more, with that particular memory."

Scott was then stymied to find himself catching various edible ingredients encased within a twelve-inch long roll of bread, the kind that another great bifocaled legend would shill regularly at any given Subway.

"You, of course, recall the fateful duel that occurred between yourself and Jason Wyngarde. Well, I am about to engage you in another contest," cried the gigantic galoot, "and we are going to employ weapons with which I am far more familiar…and which will ultimately prove far more lethal."

Scott looked incredulously at the tubby threat, then took up the sub in his own defense. Judging by the near catatonia of all his teammates at the moment, it looked as if there wasn't going to be any other way.

Several, several meters away in the Morrisotan territory, on the other side of the road across which this Brobdingnagian bus now traversed, a very small, rundown home stood, its owner standing angrily in front of it, upon his once verdant but now withering lawn, and shaking his fist most vindictively. All around him, soulless suited Marvel Machine shareholders were approaching him with menacing gunlike weapons.

"How many times have I told you not to come around here?!" screamed the man, known as Quiddle. "This is only a timeshare, which I've really regretted investing in—my permanent home is in the nicer, older-school part of Claremontana—but I still don't want you around! GET OFF MY LAWN!"

This caused the heads of Scott and even the Quesadilla—hell, almost even the crania of the catatonic atop the public conveyance—to turn their heads quizzically. The moment delayed the impending duel for the soul of the Summery Cyclops.

"You pesky sharesuckers!" continued Quiddle as he hollered his head off at the insidious interlopers. "I told myself, circa 1990, I wished and cried for an X-Men cartoon, a regular one beyond the Konami-Arcade-derived 'Pryde-of-the' pilot! Something that would come off just like Spidey and His Amazing Friends (where I admit I first learned of Iceman), and/or the Incredible Hulk show with a goldilocked, cowboy-hatted-hick Rick Jones and his only-in-that-world-girlfriend Rita, with the restaurant and all! So BADLY I wanted an X-Men program like that, beyond their guest appearances on Spider-Man and Firestar et al!

"Little did I know that such a show would end up being like the part in the novel _Frankenstein_, a few chapters in, when the creator takes a step back, horrified, wondering to himself, 'What the fuck is this?!' (Well, Shelley didn't really write that, but…)"

For the next several teeth-grinding minutes, this Quiddle kept his part-time-home invaders at bay with such rhetoric, he not really repelling them but only making them turn up the dials on their taser weapons to even greater intensities. As such, they were not holding their fire to listen to him, but just to charge up for an even greater shot at their target.

As Scott shook his head whimsically at the raving lunatic, his rotund ragamuffin of a foe took a swipe with his sandwich, scoring Cyke across the face with the spiciest of peppers. "Gonna give you some flavor in your character, Scotty!" shouted the evil invader as he reared back for another strike. Don't have to be the one-dimensional boy scout you've always been!"

"I won't have to dictating to me the trajectory of my personality…of my character…of my life!" Cyclops punctuated this with a overhead swing of his own sandwich, which the Quesadilla expertly blocked. No one had as much experience with eats—and, at the other extreme, with tastelessness, for that matter—as the Quesa.

It did not occur to the hero until far too late, as well, that the sandwich with which he was vying for his life—his very soul—was undoing him, in a way. Because his weapon was weighed down with an overwealth of onions, the resulting fumes fogged up his ruby quartz glasses something fierce, in addition to assailing his nostrils, a lethal combination for the Clops. Verily, his ability to blast optically was nearly incapacitated. (Not that he could really get at his Booby-Quarts-fortified foe with them, anyway).

"You will not stop me…er, US from throwing you under, Scott," rejoindered the queasiest Q as he thrust forward with his own club of a club, his opponent barely jumping off to the side in time. "It is time for you to go the way your first wife did, way back in the eighties…all the way under the bus. And those here in their rocket seats," he added, indicating Logan, Emma, and Hope, "they will reach a new stratum of greatness, of palatability to the public, thanks to your sacrifice."

Cyke could only furrow his brow at this, saying nothing more at the moment in order to redouble his efforts towards the duel at hand.

"Don't you see?" continued the Quesa as the fight (admittedly) protractedly wore on. "Like so many other anally alliterative, assiduous heroes of Machine lore, you've been plain-ass goody-goody Scott Summers for too long! It's time to you to do a Hulk-180 and go for a full heel turn! The prospective skyrocketing of sales and the future of our people demand nothing less!

"What we have planned for you is the same thing my superiors had planned for your first spouse a decade and a half ago. You like your peaceful, marital bliss, don't you? Well, TOUGH CRAP.

"It's all warm and fuzzy for a good number of issues…but then those from my dimension, who have faithfully loved and paid attention to it, become somewhat…bored with it all. And unlike other universes, such as those of a novelistic publisher's packages, or a finite celluloid series—which come to a definitive end after only so many years—you necessarily have to go on forever, and ever, and ever. It's just like the perpetually-unspooling threads in effing…professional wrestling, for Christ's sake. 'Happily ever after' just never applies to your medium…sorry."

The Quesa then held off hitting with his hoagie a second, jumped safely away from Scott, and looked to the woman who had always completed (basically even just comprised) Scott Summers. He then fixed his eyes into a vacant stare.

"JEAN GREY."

This could only be met with a completely stymied look by the fatman's combatant.

"What the hell…"

Then the Quesa came out of it. He flexed his shoulders back, shook his head from side to side, and cracked his neck muscles. "Sorry. Had to do that. As with every X-series ever, in which the most seminal mutant woman's name has to take up its own caption, punctuated with a poignant period, at least ten times…er, X times (Roman numerally) per issue, so too do we have to pay homage to the magnificent goddess in similar fashion, every twenty minutes or so. So, let's see." The humongous huckster hurled himself back into the duel with a Hulk-desert-traversing leap, landing just inches from Cyclops. The enemy raised his sub once more in challenge. "Where was I.

"Oh, yeah. So, like, don't worry, Scott, in terms of exposure in the franchise!" The two set to pseudo-swordfighting once more as the Quesa went on. "You'll still be in the story! You'll just be…reduced to a wooden prick for at least the next dozen years. You'll continue to be in the celluloid representations…but of course, as nothing more than a relatively minor character, or as a pitiful victim, or—most prominently—as the eternal dramatic foil for the one who we know is REALLY the original, main hero of your universe…you'll keep on being more of a _foil_ than these sandwiches pretend to be right now in our duel!

"It's okay, because why should mainstream humanity ever know of all the brave, integral exploits you did in the name of the Dream for nearly the last forty years? I mean, fuck that! This is a new decade slash century slash millennium! After all that, after all you did for a wondrous chunk of the sixties through nineties, you should really just be, for now and for good, a wall for the Claws to knock down, and nothing more.

"In fact, the summer after the apocalypse of the...Mayan persuasion, it's gonna be GREAT! Jean, here," and then the Quesa cleared his throat to rid himself of overly acidic phlegm, "with her 1.5 second cameo in the feature presentation featuring everyone's adamantium-skeletoned healing-factored clawed Puncturing Protagonist, she's gonna further cement the idea that she and your arch rival are, and have always been, the quintessential superhuman mutant Donna Reed and Jimmy Fucking Stewart sweetheart couple!"

"If you consider it for a bit more than a minute, you and Jean are sort of like the…new wave in narrative, really. …And hey, the governor of Bendiana, he's gonna author a little series on the side, in about another dozen years or so, that'll bring up your Sixties self to the present—the self that was always so upright and admirable—so that's something, a bit of a consolation prize. Won't nearly begin to redeem you, though. Especially after the fact that in the year of the Mayan Calendar's expiration, you're going to commit genocide of ginormous proportions, as you'll be imbued with your wife's Phoenix power. And where will she be? Well, as I said, your narrative is something continuously organic, continuously surprising, continuously…mutating…"

"I've had ENOUGH!" screamed Scott as he waved his swordly sandwich aside and belted out with another optic blast—the most he could manage at the moment. Again, the onions on the subs made it difficult for him to see through his visor, so the shot slanted off in a direction which was far off from the trajectory Cyclops desired. Regardless, the Quesa cringed a second, even though he knew he was impervious with his undesirable mass…though the corpulent creep wasn't what Cyke was aiming for anyway.

Just as the ruby laser blast shot past the far end of the bus—and through the bottoms of various seating mechanisms along the way—Scott noticed to his dismay that those whom he was trying to free were already liberated somehow. "Where…?!"

"Oh, shit…yeah!" screamed the queasy Quesa as he, too, now turned and noticed that his captives had vacated the transportational premises. "EMMA! HOPE! LOG…WHAT THE FUCK?!"

A skinny assistant suddenly rose to the top of the bus. Quickly he took the side of the Quesa.

"What the hell's going on, Lowely?!" yelled the Q at his underling. "We weren't going to harm them…hell, if anything, we were going to give them the moment they've been waiting for! (Well, Hope didn't really have to wait, but it's okay, 'cause she's _Hope,_ so she's automatically and necessarily entitled to everything… )"

"They just...absconded, Mr. Quesa," explained the underling, addressing the man monster with more than a modicum of apprehension. "I don't really know what's up…although I heard Howlett muttering something about how he has to go and retroactively be the one on the books who first discovered Antarctica, America, Africa, Pangaea, and Gondwona…as well as all the Internets, of course."

The Quesa stood and stewed for a few moments, then sighed long and low. "That's _it?_ …Well, I suppose it will suffice, for now." The frightening fatman then leaned in closer to the pseudo-penner. "As long as he ends up not only supplanting Summers here, but also Peter Parker, the way football is replacing baseball as the American pastime, then I'm fine with it all."

Lowely stood stock, nodded, and heiled the Quesa appropriately before leaving. "I will keep you posted on what's going on with the others—with Emma and Hope, my obes…I mean, my outstanding overlord, as matters develop."

"Yes…just keep me chowing down, sitting on the treadmill of the magnificent Marvel Machine."

So the sandwiches continued to clash throughout the dusking in Grant County, Cyclops at times barely shrugging off the looming submarine of the other, an aggressive object which continuously threatened to strike at his lasering cranium—not unlike what occurred at the climax of a narrative about eighteen months past, in which the flourishing bromance with his greatest same-side rival had to end, Schismatically, necessarily, and most graphically, for no other reason than the sake of sensationalism and sales.

Jeanwhile, the wondrous woman of the mind, who still stood ostensibly in catatonia as her love and the rotund roustabout continued to go at it—she was actually not statuesque within, but stirring with anticipation. To paraphrase the number one emotional threat to her beautiful marriage…soon it would be her turn, to tilt with the blubbering, blubbery beast known as the Quesadilla.

Otherwise, a brazen old schooler yet stood defiantly on his timeshare lawn against the circling shareholders of the Machine. "You won't take me alive, damn it!" he cried, almost desperately now, as they closed in. "This shit was the JAWN, once upon a time, when it was cult! My GOD, what a watering down, with that nineties show and thereafter! What happened to the tender traumas of the Mutant Massacre, and the Fall of the Mutants? What happened to the visceral urgency of Inferno? Y'all take the effin' X-Men, and you give them a candy-ass cartoon with TAS, with the theme song sounding like a sped-up version of the chorus for Whitney Houston's 'I'm Your Baby Tonight' (at least at some points)…

"…Well, I'M YOUR BASTARD TODAY!"

And with that, Quiddle shucked off his bifocals, squinted, and…just, like, started blinking uncontrollably at everyone around him.

But the ocular emissions never came.

"Blast…like, literally! And I followed you all these years, Scott…!"

The suits closed in once more with their eponymous weapons, now fully charged.

"You fraternal fucks!" he cried. "Thanks to you and the cartoon and all its putrid put-upon progeny, the entire franchise is so obnoxiously oversaturated now! X-things make _Guitar Hero_ and _Call of Duty_ look like Vectrex one-offs in terms of how saturated the entire entity has become. Why can't it just be simple again?! I mean, I never read every single issue ever that came out for X, even back in the day, but I read many, and I still recall when there were just enough series to count on one friggin' hand. When one would just say 'X-Men' and you knew exactly which series one was referring to, without having to ask which was the appropriate preceding adjective, or adverb, or interjection in the title…"

"I stopped reading…er, listening to you at the words 'I never read every single issue back in the day,'" said one suit nearby. Whereupon Quiddle reached into one of his Dead Rising item slots, whipped out a shotgun, and abruptly blew his head off.

Then taking a moment to reach into another item slot and heal the fellow completely with a pint of orange juice from the same game, he continued frantically to address the invaders before him…as well as the Quesa now, atop his bothersome bus.

"Like, the X-Men—and the OG X-Factor, for that matter as well…(who were basically the OG X-Men as well, of course…)—they were all such mavericks, before the mainstream," continued Quiddle on his unending rant. "The Factor doing their thing all over the city with that Ship looming more proudly than the WTC stands today…"

(Editor's Note: This story takes place around 2000/2001, before the horrific, abominable terrorist attacks in NYC and elsewhere…no disrespect intended for 9/11—it's just a point of reference. –Q42)

"…The 'Men…and the 'Women, of course…they all roughing it all tough in the Down Under Outback…I mean, the past several years it's been like, they might go, like, to the Steakhouse of the same name now, but that's about it.

"God! Give me the days of yore when I lived in Wisconsimonson and Pennsilvestri! Not this bloodless shit that's been shucked down our throats since 1992 and that damn Animated…AAAGH!"

Quiddle cried out now, almost involuntarily from cultist angst, as well as the fact that he was facing a full-fledged firing squad of tasers at the ready.

"Don't…don't tase me bro…and sis!...just because I have more TASTE than TAS, and thereafter!

"Where have the days gone of twenty-minute issue readings, with tons of dialogue therein?

"Where have the days gone—and I'm talking postmillennial, in this instance—of giving a shit about the characters—and their loving bonds, such as those of Scott and Jean—their destined love which you fuckers had shoved down our throats since 1963 anyway, remember?!—over sensationalism and sales?

"COMIC BOOKS DIED OR AT LEAST LOST THEIR SOUL WITH THE CHANGEOVER FROM NEWSPRINT TO GLOSSAAAAARRRGGGHHH!"

Instants following, Quiddle's semi-conscious form—tased profusely, almost to death—toppled backward onto the lawn, not far from the cellphone that flopped out of his pocket upon his tumbling down.

Said device went off in another few seconds, and the caterwauling cad did all he could to click it on with crazily-twitching fingers as the Machine shareholders all took deep, cleansing, cathartic breaths, satisfied that this old fool had received his serving of mainstream justice.

"H-h-hello?" was all Quiddle could manage as the speakerphone was barely activated.

"Quiddle?" came the hovering voice from the other end.

"M…Ma…"

"You're coming over for dinner this evening, as usual, right?"

But Quiddle was too shocked (eletrocutionwise) and too spent at this point to formulate any kind of response.

His mother continued nonetheless. "I just wanted to let you know…tonight it's just gonna be you, me, and a special guest…I never told you all these years, but…

"You see…um, your dad…he's not really your…"

And then the frenzied eyeballs of Quiddle rolled over to where the phone lay. "Mm…_Muh?!_" was all he could manage.

"You're gonna meet your_ real_ father…his name's…James Howle…"

_ "AW, HELLLLL NO!"_

And so the wreck-cons of Wolverine perpetuated throughout this universe, to no end ever.

Atop the QuesaBus, the same underling from earlier on reported once more, stiffening and giving his wooden salute to his oversized overlord.

"Report."

"We've found out what Hope has been up to, sir."

"Well…? Don't leave me in tales of suspense! Throw me a Terminus-sized T-Bone!"

"She's been tearing all through my own home state of Lowesiana-going on a total rampage. She's perpetrated sixty-three acts of arson, engaged in thirty-one home invasions—whereupon she's wrecked each and every household beyond repair—and broken one hundred thirteen noses in the last hour."

"Oh—_that Hope!_"

"What should we do about it all, sir?"

Quesa wasn't even paying attention for a second. "…What? Oh…nothing, of course. Let the girl rock and roll, as Blue Oyster Cult would say. She did all our taxes a few weeks back, so it's cool."

As Hope was great with accountancy, you see, everyone at the Machine overlooked the fact that she was absolutely atrocious with accountability. Because answering for one's actions should always just be optional for a true hero, of course.

Yes, the Mutant Messiah maintained eternal impunity for everything; no matter how much the teen trampled all over everyone else, be it enemy or especially ally, Hope would always stay more Scot Free than Cyclops was Scott Summers. As a Wunderkind for whom all wrongs would be overlooked because of her specific circumstances, Hope Summers would always be to heroic answerability what Christopher Paolini was/is to fantasy-writing integrity: the heroine's carte would always remain more blanche than Emma Frost's hair was bleached.

And what _was_ the once-White Queen herself up to now, as well?

Our man from Lowesiana assiduously supplied the answer. "Sir…it's not really so much _what_ she's doing at the moment, but rather _who_."

"Ahh…par for the course, as always."

Although even the Frosty, frippery-fraught frau would never, _ever_ begin to reach the fornicative bodycount that Whore-sir-whore Supreme Howlett continuously amassed. The Wolvy One made other literal, serial fuckers like Conan and James Bond look like luckless virgins in contrast.

Thus, dear seven-year-old precocious comic book readers out there: I give you your heroes.

Back on the bus, under which Scott Summers was supposed to be thrown in so many ways, the dreadfully-drawn-out contest of contumacious comestibles was soon to come to a close. Scott leapt back into the battle with renewed vigor, he viciously beating down on his enormous adversary with a hoagie full of hurt. The Quesa, in fact, might have been duly done in by the Clops, were it not for a devious ace that was up the former's sleeve.

Or stocking, as it were.

Scott stood over the hunched form of the huge Quesadilla, the hero ready to shunt his…er, hero down the throat of his enemy (just to keep track, I'm referring to his _sandwich_, by the way…this author isn't going for slash here.)

Then a second later the OG Optic Blaster torqued forward agonizingly, his form looking as devastated as it did on the cover of (New) (Legacy) X-Men Volume 2 Issue 97, that insidious issue in which we pretty much saw the definitive last of the old school Scott.

The queasy Quesa then sat up a bit more, he satisfied to see Cyclops falling to the surface of the bus's roof, the enemy's deadly Quesadagger, made of course from Quesadilla tortilla and filling, digging into the hero's hindquarters.

Feet away, the catatonic eyes of the woman Scott always adored, in any reality, at any level of lowness, those eyes flickered, just as did the pupils of the alien clone Phoenix when Wyngarde thrust a similarly heinous instrument into the heart of the lady's true love.

And an overly, overtly obnoxious old reader from afar, from before the time of the terrible TAS, and he also stirred, and he found the strength and motivation to resist, to resist the changes that would consume Cyclops and the erstwhile Marvel Girl in the new millennium, to resist those lollygagging around him…on his very lawn.

But then, before the Quesa could deliver the coup de grace…the polyhourly caption obligation arose once more, forcing him into a momentary catatonia of his own.

"JEAN GREY."

And then, as the lardy landslide lagged in his attack, the old lawn defender took the upper hand.

"You…Machine…" he muttered, the old effer scrambling onto his side to face the stopped bus, "you're giving him the same goddamn treatment as…as…I'll friggin' show you…"

He then reached into his item slots for something which he wanted to show, to even throw to the people of the Machine, should they dare encroach on his space—even his part time home in miserable-ass Morrisota.

"I…I said it once before…and I'll friggin' say it again…

"GET…THE _FUCK_…OFF MY LAWN!"

And with that, Quiddle tossed, to the top of the bus, a pair of pink shades, ones which Jean now found the strength out of her stasis to place telekinetically before Scott's eyes, to replace for the moment his ruby quartz bifocals all obfuscated by onions.

And these particular, pink glasses were of the sort worn by a great hero, one who inspired millions upon millions of fans worldwide.

They were those of the hero known to all as none other than…

"BRET THE HITMAN HART, YOU QUEASY FUCKER!"

Why, do you ask, reader?

Quiddle could now reach his feet, he quickly quaffing a Randomizer to resist the effects of further tasings as he spoke. "You said a few minutes back that your stories are like friggin' sports entertainment…well, that is the case, and more than you know. Y'see, Hitman got the same fucking treatment as Cyclops is gonna get throughout at least the 2K Oughts and Teens…the squared, straightedge hero, just thrown under the bus to make way for the bleah 'badass.'

"A baker's dozen years and counting from the millennium, mostly of Scott going to SHIT for the sake of the Stone Cold Steve James Logan Howlett Whatever Other Fucking Tacked-On Wrecked-Con Names Can Be Piled Up I can't fucking stand the thought of it anymore. It's the fucking WWF…E…whatever the fuck, all over again. Even, yes indeed, down to the pink goddamn glasses, for God's sake."

And it was now the matter of the fact that said hitglasses were atop the nose of the fearless O5 leader as his lady, now coming almost fully out of the comic-coup-catatonia brought on by the Quesa telekinetically guided her husband's head not towards their enormous enemy himself, but rather downward, into the most delicate mechanisms that powered the brazen bus itself.

[ZAPT, ZARK, AND OTHER OPTIC BLAST SOUND EFFECTS FROM SERIES PAST]

[SLADGAMMMMM]

Furious at the wreckage that was ensuing beneath all their feet now, the Killer Quesadilla got to his flabby feet as the now-completely cognizant Jean hunkered down alongside the bespectacled love of her life. (And fuck what Emma was trolling about regarding "the love of Jean's life," when she made Scott look in the mirror and see Logan's reflection during the "Astonishing" days spent in the state of Wheedington).

"Scott…I'm here."

"J…Jeannn…"

But the man was nearing an unconsciousness of his own now, as the duel with the dastardly double-cheeseburger-breathing bully before them was whipping out another couple of subs, for Round Two of the knock-down drag-out…

…When Jean simply whisked them out of his hands with a psychic flourish. While her TK talents could not affect the stocky simpleton before her, they could certainly still influence the rest of her universe. And influence it now the heroine certainly did.

She wielding a footlong in each hand (again, these are sandwiches), and brandishing them as if they were meaty muramasas, the Marvelous Lady charged fully at her enemy.

"NO!" cried the Quesa as he stomped the surface beneath him, allowing himself to fall through the bus's ceiling to the top interior tier below. As he fell through, thunderously: "You have no idea what you're doing! You have no clue as to the future that I have in store for you, my Divine Diva!"

Jean looked down, maddened, at her obese enemy. "I don't care what you have in store for me, or for Scott. You're going down—and much farther down than into the top of this hellish ride we're on."

"But you don't understand…!" the Quesa protested as he sweatily, hoggily hoofed it throughout the SHIELD-helicarrier-sized hexadecker bus. "We were going to make you into a…goddess, basically! Even more than ever before! Bring you power—and influence, my dear, sweet, gracious influence, over the entire Machine universe, even—the likes of which you couldn't even conceive, even with the Phoenix Force at your disposal!"

Due to her immense telepathic abilities, Jean, of course, didn't have to imagine. She just had to reach into the chow-crowded cranium of the Quesa and extract the info she needed, which made things much easier for her (as well as for this author, in speeding up the resolution of this goddamn story a bit).

"So," she said, after reviewing all of the events over the last dozen years or so, and holding the Quesa suspended in midair with terrifying TK. "Well. I just witnessed everything in a nutshell, from Eve of Destruction to Marvel Effing NOW. Let me slow down a bit and recap what I've perceived.

"After I lead a globally-ragtag team on a completely inconsequential expedition through a Magneto-led Genosha, everything seems to go from spastic spandex to disaffected dusters—at least the latter's in my case, with that huge overcoat I have. It looks…meh, on me.

"Anyway, then my husband…oh, no he doesn't. No. He does NOT have a thing of a fling with…with that vanilla-flavored fucker, of all people.

"Well, it looks like he does. But then, before he and I can kiss and make up…I go off and freaking

DIE.

"AGAIN.

"THEN, things go a century and a half into the future, sort of. With this Here Comes Yo' Mama story—supposedly one of the last great epics of Morrisota—Logan becomes irretrievably and irreversibly ensconced the main hero of our mythos, effectively supplanting my beloved husband in many ways—just as the LIE-Action Films hold it to be the case.

"I go off to some White Hot pseudo-pocket dimension to do 'Phoenix Work,' which is officially too wonderful to be tangibly defined, but basically it amounts to, like, rearranging cosmic sock drawers and other things that keep me from being an effing living and breathing functional character for, like, forever.

"I then go and encourage Scott to perpetuate his fling with Vanilla Fuck, and he plays along with this, seemingly comfortably, for years on end. Wolverine becomes my Number One Mourner now, making him astronomically more sympathetic to all audiences than Scott. And on and on it goes.

"Essentially, I become The Christ, Scott becomes Lucifer (and I'm not talking about that kind-of-pointy-hat guy who crushed the Professor's legs decades ago and then just fell off the face of the Earth, unlike almost every other foe we've faced who comes back ad nauseam—except for maybe the Vanisher…and, like, the male version of Unus), and Wolverine becomes the Simon Peter of the Church of Jean Grey. It's one-sided, it's unbalanced, and it's disgusting. It's not what we were all these decades, and I'm not standing for it.

"Even during the Dark Phoenix Saga way back when—where, admittedly, yes, Scott was the male lead, and I the female lead, with Logan as a side draw—even though he wasn't as elevated as Scott and I was then, Wolverine was still handled with dignity. And all three of us were presented with effing dignity, all the way up till the millennium. Which is MUCH more than I can say for the way Scott will generally be presented in the coming twelve or so years. MUCH." Jean accentuated the "much"s here just like her voice actress Jennifer Hale did in the Capcom fighter in which Phoenix appeared—even though in our reality Phoenix shouldn't technically be appearing in such games, as she's supposed to be too busy at that time, rearranging cosmic sock drawers in the White Hot Room.

Jean wasn't done with the Quesa, in any case. "And don't even get me started on the 'Me' School. God. I…effing…SUPPLANT the Professor, as the patron mascot of the school. It sickens me.

"Don't you understand?" she continued, as she cornered the Quesadilla at the lowest tier of the brash bus. "You all want me on this goddamn pedestal. You all always have, from the beginning. I'm LITERALLY on pedestals in front of the Me School. And not on Earth, with all my friends, where I should be. Well, I'm through with it.

"I see from your bloated brain banks that the governor of Claremontana made me unable to tell Keats from Tennyson while walking with Hank at one moment in a 'Forever' reality. Well, I do know Fitzgerald, and _The Great Gatsby_. And I'm NOT playing the TJ Eckleburg billboard, which looks over everything and everyone and intervenes from afar once every trillion years. Hell, I don't even want to be a virtual Daisy Buchanan anymore, to so many admirers in my world.

"I just want to go off with my husband and live happily ever after. The hell with it all…especially the Machine. Scott feels the same way, too, about his future now. We're just done. We've earned the right to rest with one another, and we're going to enjoy it."

The Marvelous Maiden was now standing loomingly over her enemy, a half-meter hero in each hand, she ready to dispense gastronomical justice of astronomical proportions.

"You…you CAN'T!" cried the Quesadilla as the bus, strayed off its track for about a couple of miles now, was about less than five kilometers from a forbidding Morrisotan cliffside. At this juncture, Scott too was now awake, and he jumped down to the lowest tier to join his wife's side.

The man monster was completely mewling now. "You're supposed to be dead, Jean Grey! …Like, not right now, but in a couple of years you're supposed to DIE, and for at least the next few decades, stay the fuck dead!"

"For once in my friggin' life," Jean rejoindered, blasting out the sides of the bus with her mental magnificence, "I'm NOT dying this time."

All Quesa could do at this point was look forlornly over the glorified giant go-kart that the butchered bus had now become. He gazed listlessly off into the barren, loveless Grant County distance, addressing Jean still but not making eye contact. "No…we were going to have you come back, sort of, in a baker's dozen years…but it would have been like a young you, from the Sixties, and the real you would still have been in the White Hot Room, like the biggest perpetuating Pavlovian Machine cocktease ever…so, like, in crappy-ass American film _Looper_ terms, fans would get the younger, Joseph Gordon-Levitt Jean in 2012/2013 or so, in an 'All-New' story arc, even though they would all REALLY want the older, original-gangsta Bruce Willis Jean…but we wouldn't give them back Bruce Willis Jean from the White Hot Room, not until at least the year 2035, my time, when Will Smith fights all the I-Robots in his Converses!"

The Quesa was near-completely-psychotic by now. "THE FANS CAN'T HAVE BRUCE WILLIS JEAN BACK! NOT IN MY SECONDARY-SCHOOL-REDHEAD-REJECTED LIFETIME!"

Nearby, Scott stood still, unmoving not because of a psychic catatonia but because of his undying, dogged devotion to his lady love; the thought did run through his head, though. _Whatchoo talkin' 'bout, Willis Jean?_ The man crinkled his battered brow, unable to comprehend the reference, while free associationally elsewhere on the bus, scribes were evacuating left and right while still making time to rub diff'rent strokes intimately with themselves as to when the first Jean cameo would occur—would it be fifty-three, or sixty-seven years from now in publication?—should their boss still succeed in executing the Grant County mayor's plan.

This didn't seem likely at present, though, as the titian-haired target that was Jean Grey now wheeled her trembling enemy around with one hoagie.

It was just then that his eyes went glassy and he lapsed into another canonizing caption—

"JEAN GREY."

-and made for an opening to allow the woman of honor to hover over him, hoagies in hand(s).

"Hey, Quesa.

"I got your blasted 'White Hot Room' right here."

Without another word, Jean lifted the morbidly massive man to his feet, and struck with one sandwich in his piehole, and shucked the other up in his…erm…other hole. Unlike the one encounter in our reality's Morrisotan exploits, in which Jean telekinetically moved the food in mansion invaders' stomachs up and down…here the lady was much more direct in this particular gastrointestinal approach, as she shunted the subs toward one another, the one from above and the other from below, until their edges touched within the wide, willowing Winnebago of a human being that was the Quesadilla.

Having really…hyperemboweled her haughty foe, Jean stepped back, leaving the intervening eats in the assigned orifices. She then guided herself and her love off the moving conveyance just as it reached the edge of the cliff for which it was fated.

As she and Scott levitated out of range, they both could hear their enemy as he managed to dislodge the damning sandwiches from his body. Condiments and other ingredients spewed in all directions as he damned the heroes. "FINE! I DON'T GIVE A FUCK! BE FUCKING ZERO-DIMENSIONAL ACTION FIGURES FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIVES! HAVE LESS CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT THAN EVEN THE ONGOING INTERMITTENT 'OH, BY THE WAY' RETCON REALITY-IMPROVEMENTS FOR WOLVERINE, WHERE HE DOESN'T HAVE TO DO SHIT—THE UNIVERSE JUST SHIFTS AROUND HIM TO BETTER HIS IMAGE MORE AND MORE! MOVE THE FUCK BACK TO LOBDELLAWARE, WITH EVERYTHING BEING SO SACCHARINE AND HEARTWARMINGLY SMACKED-ASS!

"YOU BOTH HAD A CHANCE TO BE SO MUCH BETTER! REAL CHARACTER

DEVELOPMENT! SCOTT, YOU COULD HAVE MOVED TO WHEEDINGTON, WHERE YOU COULD HAVE BEEN A BADASS…YOU COULD HAVE REIGNED WITH THE EX-WHITE QUEEN AT YOUR SIDE…AND YOU WOULDN'T HAVE EVEN NEEDED YOUR SHADES! SURE, YOU WOULD HAVE COME TO LEAD, LIKE, DEATH SQUADS; AND BE A FIGURATIVE AND LITERAL PUNCHING BAG FOR SO MANY OTHER CHARACTERS WHO BENEFITED FROM YOUR CHARACTER'S SACRIFICE, UNDER THE BUS; AND BE REPEATEDLY COMPARED TO HITLER IN BEING "RIGHT"; AND BECOME THE WOULD-BE PURGE OF THE ENTIRE FUCKING PLANET, WITH THE DARK PHOENIX POWER—ALL A PRICE OF SUCKING THE EXHAUST UNDER THE BUS—BUT IT STILL WOULD HAVE BEEN A CHANCE FOR YOU TO CHANGE!

"JEAN…LIVING IN BENDIANA…MY, HOW YOU WOULD HAVE GROWN AS A CHARACTER! ALL THAT IMMEASURABLE POWER COSMIC…I MEAN, WHO NEEDS TO BE A REGULAR SERIES HEROINE WHEN YOU'RE OMEGA LEVEL?! AND SURE, THE GOVERNOR OF BENDY WOULD HAVE, IN HIS 'ALL-NEW' OUTING, MADE YOUR GORDON-LEVITT SELF INTO A MORE INVASIVE, OVERBEARING TELEPATH THAN EMMA AND BETSY/KWANNON COMBINED…BUT YOU WOULD STILL HAVE DEVELOPED THROUGH ACTUALLY HAVING NOTICEABLE FLAWS, AND MOVED OUT OF THE STATE OF MARYSUELAND!"

(This author realizes that "Marysueland"—derived from "Maryland"—is probably the most uninspired of jurisdictional titles in this reality; however, the name is only as bland as its inhabitants (including both Sues and Stus alike)).

Then, even as the bus husk was now tumbling down, down the cliffside…"JEAN! JEAN…I—AND MY SUCCESSOR, AXELOPALYPSE—WE BOTH HAD SUCH GREAT PLANS FOR YOU…OH BRUCE WILLIS JEAN…EVEN BEYOND THE 'YOU'-NAMED SCHOOL…WE WOULD HAVE SET UP AN ENTIRE ISLAND, ALL MILITARISTICALLY DEVOTED TO YOUR INCESSANT MAGNIFICENCE! THAT'S RIGHT—JEANOSHA! JEANOSHA! JEANOSHA!

"JEANOSHAAAAAAAAAA…!"

The semi-man sounded like a pathetic version of Al Pacino yelling "ATTICA!" repeatedly in an old Seventies classic as…

[BRASHOOOOOOMMMMM]

…the bullying bus—and the miserable monstrosity that the Machine had become these past several years—was finally brought crushingly and most explosively to discomfiture on the cruel, cold Morrisotan rocks below.

Above at cliff's edge, the wonderful, true pairing that was Scott and Jean gazed at the smoldering wreckage while holding hands tightly. They then held each other fully.

"Scott," The Great Grey began, "…I'm so glad that you're alright."

"Jean…I couldn't imagine becoming any of those horrific, completely psychopathic things that that…tub of lard said I would become in the new millennium. His menacing us has only reinforced the bond between us, as well as the resolve I have to be your man for always. I love you…I have always loved you, and that will never, ever, _ever_ change."

They held one another, sincerely and tenderly, for minutes on end, the passionate redness of Jean's hair and Scott's eyes graphically scratching out the looming jade of the Grant County atmosphere all around them.

Another hour past, the couple traipsed jauntily out of what appeared to be an old-time Mom and Pop store. The owner of the place recognized Jean, as he received a notice from the Grant Mayor that his general store, as well as all the others in the state, would be converted into a "Jeaneral" store in honor of the lady's greatness.

"Just call it a dad-blamed general store, for goodness sakes," the mutant maiden told the guy.

But oh, the infinite variety of vices that could be purchased from the place! Scott came out with an alligator suit (made from real alligators), a cheesesteak, and a bottle of booze—"My 'Scottch,' so to speak," he would say—while Jean emerged all decked out with a fur coat over her costume, with carrying a box of Twinkies and a few packs of smokes in her hands.

And while the former superhuman customer never partook in any such products before, he did so to bond with his lovely spouse, who on her end had enjoyed before all of the items she had purchased, as readers from back in the day well know.

"Oh, Scott…it's just good to be human," Jean said as they sat on a bench, she taking down some of the cheap vending machine fare right now while Scott took a swig from his bottle. "I mean, still mutant, but normal…not to be an idol—in an emulation, or an adoration sense. And to just retire, with my beloved soulmate for good."

Scott nodded warmly. "It's going to be so wonderful, in ALeeska, Jean…we can finally settle down, after about forty years of adventuring. I'd say that's enough for a career in heroing, you know? And to be able to go out to the Palin Palisades and just friggin' _stay there_, for once. And for good. I'm so sick of being roused out of my heavenly redhead's bed over there. It's like, once a decade, for me that it happens."

And once more, yes, Scott would serve time, gladly, in the afterlife to suffer, to atone for what was done to Madelyne. But, again, he had too much to live for right now.

Jean looked deep into her love's eyes, through the shades. "I can't believe that Quesa fool actually intimated that you would ever get yourself dirty with…Emma Frost, of all people."

"It's you or nothing, beautiful. Believe me: despite what rumors might be going on in this state, E-Fro just doesn't do it for me."

Jean arched an eyebrow. A bit of a tense pause. "'E…Fro,' Scott?"

An awkward pause. "What?"

"I just…I've never heard her be called…"

"Oh, I just made it up; it's like, you know, like 'J-Lo' and everything…"

And then Scott wished that he could call back the faux-pas foot that he had inserted into his mouth, something much less of a delicacy than any of the perverse perishables he and his wife just bought. But he was already metaphorically digesting it.

"Alright, well…just, let's not come up with any more pet names for other women. Especially Emma or Betsy/Kwannon. I'm all the woman you need to think about."

Jean punctuated this by looking pertly off into a corner of the general store's roof nearby. Later on she would issue a mental memorandum to herself to utterly unhypocritically and non-double-standardly obsess about the man who retroactively discovered the cure for smallpox, diabetes, and cance—er, James Logan Howlett, that is—and think about him umpteen times on the hour, deep into the night.

She then smiled back at her husband. "That chunky chump, he also said we would be 'action figures' for the duration…whatever."

"Well, honey, to be precise, he said '_fucking_ action figures'…and with what's in store for us, I sure don't mind the sound of that." He punctuated this with a caressing hand on her lower back.

And yes, perhaps the dialogue between these two seemed a bit uncharacteristic of them…but a) they were both tired and off-kilter a bit, from this adventure, as well as their careers generally; and b) such repartee is still not nearly so far removed from their true selves and psyches, at least on Scott's end, as the "She never loved you" line, for example, at the climax of the Schismatic horror between himself and his great prostitutional rival (who just now, as of this paragraph's writing, now has the alternate codename "Weapon XXI," for being the primary organism whose existence had converted the Earth's atmosphere to twenty-one percent oxygen, presumably making it more breathable to humans).

Really, though: Scott, at least in this author's estimation, would never, no matter how far he had fallen, utter such a line to an ally…even to an arch rival ally. (People in Aaronbama are just perhaps even more far gone than Morrisotans—and they despise introverts like Scott and write them as psychopaths, to boot. Just look also, for instance, at the characterization of Bruce Banner in the Hulk series penned by the governor of that jurisdiction).

But the Bruce of the moment was another referenced by the queasy Quesa earlier in the day. "You know," Jean said playfully and sarcastically, grinning goofily, "I _guess_ I could have Bruce Willis play me—maybe?!—in the movie adaptation of, say, our little adventure here…though I don't know who that 'Gordon Levitz' guy is."

"Well, I know John McClane is hotter than you are, babe."

Jean whapped Scott saucily, flirtatiously with a sleeve from her fur. "Well, you're no…Bonnie Bedelia…oh, I don't know, the heck with it." She then snuggled tightly up next to her man as she aimed the thumb and forefinger from her other hand in the direction of the chasm that claimed the Machine.

She then twitched the hand, in a mock gunfiring motion.

"Yippee ki-yay, Marvel fuckers," she said.

POSTSCRIPT

I hope at least some folks enjoyed this story. It was just a statement as to 1) admittedly my "shipping" of Scott and Jean as my OTP, and my lament at them being torn apart in the name of the Machine's pressing on—the fact is, in this reality, the opposite happens, and the Machine gets torn apart so that S and J can go on with their love; and 2) a bit of a lament at the monstrosity that Marvel has become. I know that Jean, in the late nineties, embraces her Phoenix self and wants to get into her full potential, but here I have both her and Scott compromise their potential just to settle down and be with one another. I just felt that they earned retirement, and I wanted them to have it. I'm not trying here to dis-empower either; I guess this story just has each sacrifice mutant potential in the name of love for the other.

One other thing, too, for now (I may supplement this Postscript later, also, to respond to reviews if any come up, and/or to explain anything if it needs explaining): the ending might seem a bit bizarre with the cheesesteaks and Twinkies and such, but the thing is this: Jean has been depicted with cigarettes (I believe it's Uncanny X-Men 174), has eaten Twinkies (Incredible Hulk 337), and has worn a fur (X-Factor Volume 1 Issue 53). What I like about these depictions is that she is being depicted as a fucking human being. In other words, she's not put on a pedestal, she's not mega Mary Sue, but rather someone just chillin' with a bit of something unhealthy, but hey, that's cool. Scott has to my knowledge never drunk excessively, never been seen with a cheesesteak, and never worn an alligator suit, but I included them to balance out the images, to be fair. My favorite for Jean is the Twinkies in Hulk—although I'm not cool with the line she says, I believe either in Issue 337 or in the preceding Issue 336, when the others in X-Factor (just Scott and Bobby, there) introduce themselves formally and she says "Jean Grey, Pisces," because it makes her sound cheap. I'm just saying: I like Jean best when she's closest to superhuman and not closest to GODDESS; I actually like her best just with TK abilities and nothing else because she's just on the level with everyone else. I hate the concept of "Omega Level," honestly, because to me it flies in the face of a dream of equality, or at least getting as close to it as one can—I mean, is it good to have striations among mutants like that? It bothers me that Iceman is "Omega Level" and that Jean is "Omega Level"…just have the mutants be equally powerful. To me, that's best; it's just my take on it.

Again, too, I'm totally, completely cool with almost all fans post 1992 (except for maybe literally a couple), and I don't want to alienate anyone reading for my (Quiddle's) pining for the old days or whatever: I want to stress through this story here that I'm really mad at Marvel for just becoming this frightening monstrosity IMO. Once more, though, everything's always more tender when it's fledgling and/or "underground," the latter of which is really the case here with Marvel, and not the former. Thanks so much for reading my stuff.


End file.
